Budget Category Window Cut Off [edited] (should be: Customize Report dialog window too small)

Quicken Community

In the Customize Current Budget window the categories, I have a lot, run out of the window to where I can't read them.  

Is there any way to expand the window?  Q2014 won't allow me to grab and drag to make the window larger.  

UKR

If the following doesn't help ... Sorry, you're on an old, unsupported Quicken version ... :-(

Font size problems? Display issues? (Windows)

Please do this:
Close Quicken

Check the Compatibility tab settings in your Quicken Desktop program icon:

In the Windows Start
Menu right-click the Quicken icon. Select "Open File Location". This
brings up a Windows File Explorer window. Right-click the highlighted Quicken
shortcut line item.

or

Go to the traditional Windows Desktop and right-click the Quicken program icon.

Now click
Properties.

Select the
Compatibilities tab.

Uncheck all
settings.

Windows 7, 8.1:
Check "Disable display scaling on high DPI settings". 

Windows 10:  Check "Override high
DPI scaling behavior. Scaling performed by:" and select
"Application"

Be sure to uncheck the "Run this program in compatibility mode for [older
Windows version]" setting.

Click the "Change settings for all users" button.

Click Apply and exit.

Start Quicken and see if that makes a difference.

Some additional
tuning suggestions:

Try setting the bank account registers to use a different font style or size:
in Edit / Preferences / Register click the Fonts button and try different
fonts.

Try adjusting the bank account registers' row height: in Edit / Preferences /
Register choose among the available Row Height choices: Compact, Comfortable or
Standard

Unknown

Thank you for your answer, but it did not correct the problem.  

I've attached a photo of the problem.  As you can see how the categories are moving to the right of the window and will eventually run completely off the window.  My categories have up-to 11 "levels" if that makes sense.  

UKR

Thanks for providing an image. That really helps explain the situation.

You said: "My categories have up-to 11 "levels" ..."

And that seems to be the crux of the matter.
You're the first person that I have seen in many years of hanging out at the Quicken Community with nesting levels this deep in the budget. Two or three subcategory levels are more than enough for me and probably the majority of the users.

The programmers appear to not have considered the possibility that someone would need 11 - deep or deeper subcategory - nesting and have not provided for a horizontal scroll bar in the window (or a larger window for that matter).

There's probably nothing that can be done right away, but let me see if I can reach someone at Quicken to pass word to the programmers, for consideration as enhancement in a future version of Quicken.

Unknown

Thank you.  

q_lurker

UKR said:

Thanks for providing an image. That really helps explain the situation.

You said: "My categories have up-to 11 "levels" ..."

And that seems to be the crux of the matter.
You're the first person that I have seen in many years of hanging out at the Quicken Community with nesting levels this deep in the budget. Two or three subcategory levels are more than enough for me and probably the majority of the users.

The programmers appear to not have considered the possibility that someone would need 11 - deep or deeper subcategory - nesting and have not provided for a horizontal scroll bar in the window (or a larger window for that matter).

There's probably nothing that can be done right away, but let me see if I can reach someone at Quicken to pass word to the programmers, for consideration as enhancement in a future version of Quicken.

@John Giantonio

up-to 11 "levels"

I can't imagine. 
a)  That there is really a need for that many levels, and
b)  that there isn't a better way. 

Not that you are asking for a better way, but would you care to share some more of your category setup?  I'm not saying you don't need that depth, I just can't imagine it.  The deepest I go is three:  Taxes:Federal:Withholding, Taxes:State:Estimated, etc.  

Quicken Sarah

Hi John,

I appreciate you taking the time to reach out to the Community regarding the display and the sub-category levels being cut off and apologize that it is occurring for you.  Since Quicken 2014 is no longer supported, I tested the newest release of Quicken for 2018 and confirmed that after the 8th nested level of sub-categories, the display is still cut off with no ability to scroll or resize the window. 

Since the functionality in 2014 is mirrored in the newest release,  I think it would be a great addition for a future version of Quicken and have changed your post from a question to an "Idea" instead.  The Idea threads are reviewed directly by the Development teams, for future improvements and new features.  Ideas are prioritized by User vote, the more votes an idea receives, the higher it is prioritized and likely to be implemented.

I hope this information helps, but please let us know if you have any further questions or concerns.

Thank you,

Sarah

Jeanne

Please let me re-size this dialog box. Others can be re-sized but not this one. I've got dozens of sub-categories I cannot see and hovering over each is not working well. I'm slowly and very laboriously trying to reorganize them--making them fit into this extremely limiting window. But being able to resize the window seems like a reasonable request.

UKR

As old as this Idea is, it still is a valid concern. Screens have gotten bigger over the years, yet this Customize Report dialog is still fixed size and does not adapt to the needs of the customer.

We need a bigger dialog window, with more space to show complete account or payee names and a bigger window for nested subcategories.

If the design of Quicken allows the use of up to 16 nested subcategory levels, the dialog should allow more space and/or sideways scrolling to show the complete text, even at level 16.

Please pass word to the programmers to improve the Customize Report dialog.

josephdisanto

Hello...I am wondering if you would consider allowing the dialogue box for customizing reports to be scalable (in the windows version). This is one of the most used areas of the software for me, as I am always customizing reports. But the category selection window space is so small and I can't scale it up. I also use quicken for mac., and the category select window there is both big and scalable.

Jim_Harman

At a minimum the Select Categories area of the Category customization tab could be made wider - there is extra white space at the right.

This is particularly a problem if you have long category names and/or multiple levels of subcategories.

Judyrb

Additionally, allow reports to subtotal by subcategory, not just category. For those of us with multiple levels of tags. QWin Premier Subscription

Judyrb

OOOPs, forget my last comment. If you say on the Advanced tab of an income/expense report under subcategories "show all" You do get them . Took me an hour of tearing my hair to find this. Apologies all around for my "user error".

Quicken Anja

Hello @josephdisanto,

Thank you for taking the time to visit the Community and post your Idea request.

Ideas are reviewed by our Development and Product teams to see what features people would like to have available in the future. This way other users who have the same or a similar request can vote on your idea by clicking the up arrow (see below).

Please, be sure to add your own vote as well.

UKR

Due to the age of this discussion and several Community software migrations, the link to the attached image mentioned above has gone lost.

Here's a fresh copy.

It shows the "Customize Transaction" dialog (from the Customize gear button of the Transaction Detail report, shown underneath on the right side). Also shown is the Category List, to show an example of multiple nested subcategory levels, down to the maximum of 16 levels.
The Customize dialog window is too small. It needs to be made taller, to be able to show more lines in the selection box. It also needs to be made wider, to be able to show the complete category name and more than 7 nested levels. Scrolling down one page the problem really shows:

Beyond subcategory "7 level" none of the nested subcategory levels are visible in the tiny dialog window and one cannot scroll right or otherwise expand the window to show the complete information.

Truncated account names, payee names, tag names causing problems ... this has been mentioned several times over the years in this Community and its predecessors. It's time to have this problem solved. Make the Customize dialog window both taller and wider (and expandable by the user) and expand the selection list dialog window within.

Chris_QPW

UKR said:

Beyond subcategory "7 level" none of the nested subcategory levels are visible in the tiny dialog window and one cannot scroll right or otherwise expand the window to show the complete information.

Truncated account names, payee names, tag names causing problems ... this has been mentioned several times over the years in this Community and its predecessors. It's time to have this problem solved. Make the Customize dialog window both taller and wider (and expandable by the user) and expand the selection list dialog window within.

They should also add a horizontal scroll bar to the list window too.

Rocket J Squirrel

Vote added, This needs fixing.

Wongeroo

I just subscribed to Quicken after holding back for almost half a decade. I find that there's one dialogue box size that still hasn't changed. When you open a report and you click on customize and go to Categories - I have a pretty deep tree I can't see most of it. I would like a fix to this by having this pop up box be able to maximize so I can get to the other branches of my tree. The search is somewhat broken because it only lists the 1st keyword match, not all keyword match with the branches closed. It needs a little modernizing.

[Merged Post]

Jim_Harman

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7885698/merged-improve-account-and-category-selection-in-report-customization

It appears this is a duplicate of this Idea

But also, you can often use Tags to reduce the need for deeply nested Categories.

[Merged Post]

monkmanusa

Hi - I am looking for a way to resize the window "Customize Report". Most of the tabs are "ok" to work with - but the category selection process is absolutely horrible, and I have put up with it for years hoping that the quicken development team would do something about it (even just being able to resize the window as a whole).
The category selection "pane" inside the category tab is just downright unusable.
I have hundreds of categories - with many levels of indentation which I use for business and taxes - and the small window does not show indentation correctly, the scrolling process is terrible. Just being able to determine whether a sub-category is within a parent is almost impossible - so making it extremely difficult when editing a report (which I run infrequently) to make sure I have the right categories in the report.
This window is so "1980's" - is Quicken going to do anything about this at some point in time as at the moment it is just about unusable.
Even just allowing me to resize the entire window (come on quicken - seriously - no drag handles to resize a window??!!) - might help by being able to expand the small "category selection pane" on the category tab.....

[Removed-Rant]

[Merged Post]

Quicken Jasmine

Hello @monkmanusa,

Thank you for contacting the Quicken Community with this question. 

I have located a thread that I think you may find useful in regards to customizing the size of the font in reports. You may follow this link here to access it. 

I hope you find this to be of use. 
Please do not hesitate to reach out with any further questions or concerns. 

[Merged Post]

monkmanusa

Thanks Jasmine - I appreciate the response - but this has nothing to do with the size of font's. It is to do with the fact that the Customize Reports window is not "re-sizeable" - hence the category list (in the categories tab) is tiny (only shows about 10 categories at a time), the scrolling mechanism is not very useful (I literally have hundreds of categories), and the indenting "method" used by quicken to show parent/child relationships is abysmal (for example if you select "show new categories only" it will not show the "parents" of any new categories - so sometimes I have no idea which parent a particular category belongs (I do have some child categories that are the same name - but they are within different parent categories).

Suggestions as follows:
1. Make the window resizable so that the category selection "pane" on the categories tab is more usable
2. Allow categories to be "collapsed" up to the highest parent (i.e. start the view with all category hierarchies "collapsed" - and allow me to select a "parent" to expand it (also provide collapse all/expand all/collapse this level/expand this level etc)
3. Make the "new categories only option allow you to also display those "new" categories parents in their hierarchy
4. Make scrolling not so sensitive - when using current "pane" with a huge number of categories it is unusable (allow to scroll a page at a time for example)
5. Allow resizing of the categories list "pane" within the window (or provide a pop out "category selection" window so I can have that resizable etc

Lots to do with some that are more easily developable - but there has been zero enhancements to this part of the solution since I can remember and so I am sick of waiting - hence this post.

[Merged Post]

Quicken Jared

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7849425/creating-and-voting-for-ideas-in-the-community

monkmanusa

said:

Thanks Jasmine - I appreciate the response - but this has nothing to do with the size of font's. It is to do with the fact that the Customize Reports window is not "re-sizeable" - hence the category list (in the categories tab) is tiny (only shows about 10 categories at a time), the scrolling mechanism is not very useful (I literally have hundreds of categories), and the indenting "method" used by quicken to show parent/child relationships is abysmal (for example if you select "show new categories only" it will not show the "parents" of any new categories - so sometimes I have no idea which parent a particular category belongs (I do have some child categories that are the same name - but they are within different parent categories).

Suggestions as follows:

1. Make the window resizable so that the category selection "pane" on the categories tab is more usable

3. Make the "new categories only option allow you to also display those "new" categories parents in their hierarchy

4. Make scrolling not so sensitive - when using current "pane" with a huge number of categories it is unusable (allow to scroll a page at a time for example)

5. Allow resizing of the categories list "pane" within the window (or provide a pop out "category selection" window so I can have that resizable etc

Lots to do with some that are more easily developable - but there has been zero enhancements to this part of the solution since I can remember and so I am sick of waiting - hence this post.

Hello @monkmanusa,          

I am sorry to hear that these items related to the Customer Report window seem to be causing some difficulties. Thank you for coming to the Quicken Community to discuss this subject.

I wanted to draw your attention to the of recommending features via Idea posts, in case there are items and functions you would like to see added to the software. Users can always suggest product concepts they would like to see implemented in the form of an Idea discussion thread. These concepts are then voted on by the Community. Should they prove popular enough, they are then passed on to our development team. I am linking a thread below that details the process of submitting an Idea post:



I hope that is helpful.

Thank you,

Quicken Jared 

[Merged Post]

cassfrancis

the category box when doing reports needs to be bigger or expandable - I can not see the last part of many of my category names

cm_blk

The selection boxes used to select accounts and categories when customizing a report are tiny. This makes it difficult to select categories. I can't see the entire text of most categories when they are in a hierarchy -- they don't fit in the selection box.

The report customization dialog box goes back to the early Windows (and DOS) days when the display screens had low resolution. My 17" Laptop screen has plenty of screen real estate that can be used to improve the account and category selection.

If for some reason, you don't want to make the dialog box bigger, you need to alter the user interface so the user can see the accounts and categories they are filtering on.

Quicken Anja

Hello All,

The Community Support team regularly reviews long-standing posts and Ideas for relevancy and current interest. This Idea seems to have stalled and we would like to gauge the current interest in this request. 

If you would like to see this idea implemented, please add your vote and a comment explaining how this idea would be beneficial for you. More information, including steps to vote and how to submit your own Ideas for future product features/improvements, is also available here.

Thank you,

Quicken Community Support Team

Rocket J Squirrel

I consider this a GUI bug more than an "idea" or enhancement request. Please fix.

Jim_Harman

This issue has come up many times and applies any time users have long Category names and/or deep nesting of subcategories. It should really be fixed.

Related/duplicate Ideas and posts are

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7922085/improve-account-and-category-selection-in-report-customization

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7885698/this-is-a-improvement-request-for-reports-and-category-selection

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7910888/resize-customer-report-window-category-selection-is-terrible

q_lurker

Obviously, still a GUI bug or shortsightedness that needs addressing.

offserv

excellent suggestion. i have numerous categories that are longer then the display allows.

DataFarmer

This is super under rated issue. please make this usable.